Luxembourg - Paint with the needle exhibition

If you happen to stumble upon this post, here is a little recap of the Painting with the needle project, for the ones already familiar with it, please skip forward.

The "Painting with a needle" is the pet project of Sewn Signs (Semne Cusute) Association from Bucharest, Romania. After initiating many exhibitions with the purpose of preserving our heritage and promoting the Romanian Peasant Blouse as an apotropaic shield, which included "Ie Veche, Ie Nouă", "Ia-Aidoma", Ia-Aievea" and the collaboration with the ladies from the Republic of Moldova, "Măiestria", after starting a embroidery shop and classes, then came this project.

Starting from the famous painting "La Blouse Roumaine" by Henri Matisse, eight ladies from the association recreated the blouse that maybe inspired the artist. We each researched the origin of the blouse and the embroidered signs, we than gathered the materials and started embroidering. We used linen cloth and wool, silk and metallic thread. We embellished our blouses with sequins and glass beads. And on December first, 2019, we met up at the Centre Pompidou in Paris to show our project.

The echoes of our Paris trip were so big that we had to continue and on December 13th exhibited the blouses in Luxembourg at the Romanian Embassy. More than one hundred people joined us for this unique event that took place just for a day, a couple of hours to be exact. They took photos, we shared stories, we had books about Romanian Blouses, we had prints explaining the project, we had Romanian cake and drinks. Although advertised within the Romanian community the admirers of the blouse found our little exhibition and we had French, Luxembourgish, Bulgarian and Albanian guests.

It feels special to see that the project you worked for the last couple of months was celebrated in this unique, cosy and intimate way. Here are some pictures:

As I was busy the whole evening, I forgot to take pictures, so most of them are saved from Facebook, from our guests, please use them accordingly.

As usual we can continue the conversation on Instagram @mademoiselle.ralu